Smashmouth B2B Blog: Sales & Marketing Demand Gen

Back in the fall I attended Selling Power's Sales 2.0 conference. It was so informative and interactive for sales execs and marketing execs that Green Leads decided we wanted to sponsor the conference (March 4,5 in San Francisco). This time with a twist. Selling Power's publisher and Sales 2.0 co-host, Gerhard Gschwandtner has agreed to have Green Leads provide live twitter coverage from the event.

First, for those that aren't yet aware of Twitter (all 5 of you) - Twitter 101 : Twitter is a is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Here's an example of a recent tweet I posted:

The glory of twitter is that you can tweet about anything, from anywhere, and everyone can find it and read it. Tweeting a live conference provides benefits to both the attendees and to those that couldn't make it by allowing communications to and from the event. The key is finding a way to sort out the event-relevant tweets from the live twitter feed. You could just search on the words Sales 2.0 or all tweets by me on that day, but the efficient way to follow a topic is to use a #hashtag. This is the simple technique of putting a hash character in front of a keyword that everyone tweeting about puts in their tweets. This allows twitter search, RSS feeds, twitter clients such as tweetdeck, etc, to follow the discussion. In the case of the Sales 2.0 conference, we'll be using the hashtag #sales20. An example of using a #hashtag:

Attendees can comment to each other while at the event. Side chats on presentations. Requests for information. Calls to others to meet after hours for a drink. Gerhard is actually going to field questions from tweeterland:

"We just got a question from twitter. Laura Ramos from Forrester wants to know what the panel thinks about social media marketing as it pertains to sales 2.0?"

damphoux: my wife Linda just convinced me that I need to skip the cheesecake in the lobby #sales20

Be prepared - Personally, since I'm tasked with being the official broadcaster for the #sales20 event, I'm going to have a side text file with prepared links and twitter names of the speakers. I can quickly copy and paste bios, etc.

Show it off - If you can accommodate the AV, have the conference organizer display the live twitter feed on a screen at the front of the conference room. This gives the whole audience the ability to participate in the twitter experience.

I definitely recommend the conference for both Sales execs and Marketing execs that support sales. If you find the topic interesting, follow the conference on twitter using hashtag #sales20, or come attend live. You can get a 50% off pass on our site. Come register.

I have my notebook of ideas for when Linda and I build our green home. It's a few years off, I'm sure, but it's full of sketches, articles, diagrams and some day, this wish book will be our home. I just added the article Eco Principles for Community Living from Treehugger. An excerpt from the article:

"Acclaimed green architect Michelle Kaufmann is now trying to parlay her success with prefab homes into green community living in her new white paper Embracing Thoughtful, Walkable Neighborhoods. Green communities are critical to changing the face of American growth because currently "if everyone in the world lived in a style similar to that of an average American, we would require three Earths to support the demand on our natural resources,” says Kaufmann."